Джеймс Чейз - Not Safe to Be Free [= The Case of the Strangled Starlet]

But this time, although his face was, as usual, expressionless, she was immediately aware that he had brought into the room an atmosphere of extreme tension and she also noticed that his upper lip glistened with tiny beads of perspiration.

“Why, hello, Sophia,” he said and his voice was just a shade too casual. “You’re back early, aren’t you?”

Had he got a girl in his bedroom? Sophia wondered with a feeling of disgust. Was there some wretched little slut trapped in there, listening against the door panel to what she was saying?

“Didn’t you hear me knocking?” she asked and because his tension made her uneasy she spoke sharply.

He moved further into the room and she noticed that he kept between her and his bedroom door.

“I did think I heard something,” he said, “but I didn’t imagine it was you.”

He took out his gold cigarette-case she had given him and as he lifted his left arm, she saw on the inside of his forearm three ugly red scratches, one of them bleeding slightly.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” she said. “Be careful: it’s bleeding.”

He glanced at the scratches, then put the cigarette-case on the table and took out his handkerchief and wiped the blood away.

“There was a cat in the corridor,” he said. “It scratched me.”

The stupid, transparent lie made her very angry.

She bit back a sarcastic retort and moved away from him, crossing to the window, turning her back on him. Should she accuse him of bringing a girl up here? Her position as his father’s third wife made such an accusation difficult. He might well tell her to mind her own business. Also she might have made a mistake, although she was sure she hadn’t. Perhaps she had better tell Floyd and let him deal with the boy.

“Wasn’t the movie any good?” Jay asked.

“No.”

There was a pause, then he asked, “Where’s father?”

The anxious note in his voice tempted her to say his father was on his way over. If there was a girl trapped in the bedroom, the idea of his father walking in might frighten him enough not to dare do such a thing again, but she resisted the temptation.

“He’s still in the cinema.”

Impatiently, she pushed aside the right-hand curtain that was hanging loose, looking for the curtain cord to fasten back the curtain.

She saw the cord was missing.

“Are you looking for something, Sophia?” Jay asked and his voice sounded very gentle.

She turned quickly.

His handsome young face was still expressionless. He was smiling, but it was a meaningless smile of a shop-window dummy.

She could see the twin reflections of herself like miniature snapshots in the lenses of his sun-glasses. She noticed how very still she stood and how tense she seemed.

“There’s a curtain cord missing,” she said.

“How observant you are I” he said and pulled from his hip pocket the scarlet cord. “You mean this? I forgot to put it back. I’ve been amusing myself with it.”

She didn’t know why, but this remark had an oddly sinister sound.

“What do you mean?” she asked sharply.

“Oh, nothing. I was bored. I was just fooling with it.”

He began to move slowly and deliberately across the room towards her. The scarlet cord hung limply in his hands and it formed a noose.

There was something about his silent approach that suddenly alarmed her. It seemed stealthy and somehow threatening.

She moved away from the window, her heart beating fast and she stepped around the table that stood in the middle of the room so that it was between him and her.

Jay paused, looking at her across the table, the cord still held in a loop between his slim brown fingers.

Sophia realized that she was beginning to be frightened. She felt instinctively that something had happened in this room. The smell of the unfamiliar perfume, the scratches on Jay’s arm, the loop made by the curtain cord formed a pattern that she couldn’t bring herself to analyse.

She wanted now badly to run out of the room, but she controlled the impulse. This was absurd, she told herself. Nothing had happened. Why should she be suddenly afraid of Floyd’s son?

She forced herself to remain where she was, aware that her heart was now thumping and she was slightly breathless.

“Jay — have you brought a girl up here?” she demanded and she was surprised to hear how harsh her voice sounded.

Jay released one end of the cord and let it swing like a scarlet pendulum. He continued to stare at her.

“Did you hear me?” she said, raising her voice.

“How did you guess?” he said. He waved his hand towards his bedroom door. “You are quite right. As a matter of fact — she’s in there now.”

There had been a time when Joe Kerr had been considered by editors and agents as a top-flight journalist: probably the best in the game.

There had been a time when Joe could call his agent, tell him he was going over to London or Paris or Rome or wherever it was to cover some special event, and, within the hour, his agent had sold the article, sight unseen and had also got a generous expense allocation to cover the cost of the trip.

At that time Joe could not only write brilliantly but he was also a class photographer and that made a very lucrative combination.

He reached the peak of his success in 1953. He not only had a book chosen by the Atlantic Book of the Month Club, but he also had a profile running for three weeks in the New Yorker and Life had given a five-page spread to his remarkable photographs of the birth of a baby.

But the highlight of that year for him was his marriage with a nice but thoroughly ordinary girl, whose name was Martha Jones.

Martha and he set up home at Malvern, which was a little over an hour’s run from Philadelphia, Joe’s working headquarters.

Married life agreed with Joe. Martha and he were as happy together as two people really in love can be happy.

Then something happened that was to alter completely the rhythm of Joe’s life.

One night coming back from a rather wild party, Joe, not exactly drunk, but certainly fuddled, accidentally killed his wife.

They had driven back to their home in Joe’s Cadillac, with Joe driving. He knew he was a little high and he had driven the thirty odd miles with extreme care. He was carrying with him his most precious possession and he wasn’t going to put her in the slightest danger just because he had had one whisky too many and was a little dizzy in the head.

They arrived home without incident and Martha got out of the car to open the garage doors while Joe slid the automatic gear into reverse and had his foot on the brake pedal.

As Martha was about to open the garage doors, Joe’s foot slipped off the pedal and the car began to move backwards.

Fuddled and realizing Martha was directly behind the car, Joe stamped down hard on the brake pedal, missed it and his foot descended on the accelerator.

The massive car swept back at a speed that made it impossible for Martha to jump clear.

She was smashed against the garage doors and, with the splintered and broken doors, hurled into the garage and crushed against the back brick wall.

Joe never recovered from this experience. From the moment he got out of the car and ran to the lifeless body of his wife, he began to go downhill.

He began to drink. He lost his touch and editors soon discovered he could no longer be relied on. After a while, the assignments didn’t come to him and the articles he wrote lost their bite and didn’t sell.

Anyone knowing him in 1953 wouldn’t have recognized him as he shambled up the drive of the Plaza hotel after his brief conversation with Jay Delaney when he had hopefully asked if Jay could arrange an interview for him with Jay’s father.